Who You Think I Am attempts to speak to our current Internet age, but mines only shallowly with its picked-over storytelling mode. Juliette Binoche, for nearly…
Anne at 13,000 Ft. keeps its familiar portrait of an unraveling psyche fresh through its viscerality and opaque characterization. Anne at 13,000 Ft. only occasionally utilizes…
Faya Dayi is the best kind of documentary, one that eschews prefab forms and instead finds mesmerizing beauty in the quotidian. Programmed as part of Sundance’s…
Mogul Mowgli doesn’t quite know how to weight its issues or manage its scant runtime, but Ahmed keeps things raw and poignant. Rather strangely, Bassam Tariq’s…
Together is an endurance test for viewers and a self-satisfied pat on the back from the filmmakers. Stephen Daldry has become a bit of a punching…
499 boasts legitimate emotional weight, but undercuts its power with too much heavy-handed symbolism. Almost five centuries after the Spanish invasion of Mexico, a lone…
No Man of God works surprisingly well for a while, but fails to stick its schlocky landing. On the day before the official premiere of…
The Meaning of Hitler is a bold, risk-taking work from a confident directorial duo. Adapted from Sebastian Haffner’s The Meaning of Hitler, a book that the…
Cryptozoo is both technically and thematically potent, but it’s the film’s third act which cements it as an exceptional and surprising animated work. In Cryptozoo,…
Ma Belle, My Beauty is a lovingly realized and mature look at polyamory, but it fails to probe its emotional core sufficiently. Polyamory is a subject…
Respect is a generic, overlong, unconvincing slog that’s disrespectful to the Queen of Soul’s legacy. When it comes to portraying pop culture icons known by millions…
White As Snow adds a wry wrinkle of feminist reclamation to its classic storyline, but unfortunately fails to successfully execute much else. Like so many other…
Curiosa is a shallow bit of French period erotica, sometimes visually compelling but devoid of much insight. Loosely conceived and freely adapted from the photographs and…
Lacking much in the way of an explored thesis, The Viewing Booth only musters the power of a gimmick. Talking about the patent-pending Interrotron in a 2004…
Swan Swan’s good intentions get lost amid its tonal disarray and narrative faceplants. Character actor extraordinaire Udo Kier takes center stage in Swan Song, writer-director…
Fullt Realized Humans is a half-realized film, awkwardly sliding between authenticity and sitcom superficiality. Bland but inoffensive, Joshua Leonard’s post-mumblecore rom-com Fully Realized Humans resembles nothing…
Ride the Eagle is a slight, breezy affair that succeeds on the strength of its comedic charm and slick pacing. If you had another chance with…
Enemies of the State fails to probe deeply, content with its story’s sensational surface at the expense of more meaningful study. Produced by genius documentarian and…
Nine Days angles toward profundity, but is a largely maudlin, intellectually bankrupt genre-exercise of self-congratulation. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, prisoners sit facing a wall…
Never Gonna Snow Again harnesses is an oddball, observational film that manages to comment on much without veering into obviousness. Premiering at the 2020 Venice Film…